AOL Time Warner Essay -- essays papers

AOL Time Warner On January 10, 2000, one of the largest, most powerful mergers was announced to the world. Media giant Time Warner will join forces with the Internet superstar, America on Line. The $183 billion dollar deal is the biggest in history. In the recent past, there has been a wave of merger-mania, both in the United States and in Europe. The merger of the Millennium is between America on Line and Time Warner. The AOL Time Warner deal represents the joining of the Old Media with the New Media. Not only is it a marriage of different approaches, the two CEO's are very diverse individuals. The two companies are quite different, in nearly every aspect. Some of the divisions of Time Warner have been around since the 1920's, while the youngster, AOL is a mere fifteen years old. The quick paced, new up starting Internet companies never thought in a million years they would ever need the old stand-by media organizations. "The Internet will revolutionize everything", that is what their beliefs were. They were fearless and believed themselves to be invincible, but things have changed. The Internet has put the world only a mouse click away and it has changed the world. The fact of the matter is the world of the Internet is extremely competitive and in order to survive, you must invest huge sums into your marketing campaign, in some cases up to seventy percent of a budget. The one thing that you can always could on in this word is change, and there are going to be some major changes in the realm of the high tech companies. The 'techies' are going to have to realize their need for and have to learn how to form lasting relationships with the 'old stand bys' in order to keep up with today's world. Time Warner is, for the most part, a stable reliable organization. Time Warner's holdings include many magazines, Time, Sports Illustrated, Money and Fortune just to name a few. Time Warner also possesses Warner Brothers Studio, Warner Music (which recently acquired EMI Music), Turner Classic Movies and an array of television stations. A partial list of the broadcast networks includes CNN, TNT and HBO. Time Warner is also the second largest cable television provider in the country. They have also recently invested huge sums of money into their cable system to prepare it for Roadrunner technologies. Roadrunner is an alternative to a standard Internet se... ...ast year crossed national borders. Experts expect this trend to continue in Europe. One French banker made the bold prediction that one third of the top forty blue chips in France will either gobble up, or be gobbled up by another company in the coming year. I believe that the mergers and super mergers are going to continue in the future. I also believe that these transactions are going to become necessary for businesses to remain competitive and to not fall to the wayside. The joining of mega media giants AOL and Time Warner is going to start a trend and I believe we will see many more combinations of similar companies in the future. Companies will be forced to play this merger game if they want to stay alive and remain successful. This, I believe, is the trend for the new millennium and it is a trend that will become a new way of doing business. Bibliography: Sources: Businessweek Jan 24, 2000: "Welcome to the 21st Century" "The Big Grab" "The Great Irony of AOL Time Warner" Jan 31, 2000 "Burying the Hatchet Buys a Lot of Drug Research" The Economist "The Record Industry Takes Fright" "The Net Gets Real" Time "The Big Deal" Wall Street Journal Assorted articles